The Four Kinds of Fuck-Ups Kristi Noem Committed on March 15

The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia has justifiably gotten a lot of attention. [docket]

Yesterday, the government confessed it sent him, on the third deportation flight on March 15, to El Salvador, in spite of a 2019 order prohibiting his deportation to El Salvador based on real fears of persecution, including gang targeting.

Here’s how Acting Field Office Director Enforcement and Removal Operations in Harlington, TX, Robert Cerna, described Abrego Garcia’s deportation in a declaration submitted to support the government’s claim that it fucked up but it can’t be forced to do anything about it.

5. On March 15, 2025, President Trump announced the Proclamation Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act Regarding the Invasion of The United States by Tren De Aragua.

6. On March 15, 2025, two planes carrying aliens being removed under the Alien Enemies Act (“AEA”) and one carrying aliens with Title 8 removal orders departed the United States for El Salvador. Abrego-Garcia, a native and citizen of El Salvador, was on the third flight and thus had his removal order to El Salvador executed. This removal was an error.

[snip]

12. The operation that led to Abrego-Garcia’s removal to El Salvador was designed to only include individuals with no impediments to removal. Generally, individuals were not placed on the manifest until they were cleared for removal.

13. ICE was aware of this grant of withholding of removal at the time AbregoGarcia’s removal from the United States. Reference was made to this status on internal forms.

14. Abrego-Garcia was not on the initial manifest of the Title 8 flight to be removed to El Salvador. Rather, he was an alternate. As others were removed from the flight for various reasons, he moved up the list and was assigned to the flight. The manifest did not indicate that Abrego-Garcia should not be removed.

15. Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador. This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13. [bold]

One thing complicates this case: In 2019, an immigration judge took the hearsay word of an informant sufficiently seriously to detain Abrego Garcia based on a claim that he had ties to MS-13; the decision was upheld on appeal. But, as noted, Abrego Garcia also got a ruling that he legitimately feared deportation because he had refused to join Barrio 18 after they extorted his family and shut down their business. After that (and after his marriage to his US-citizen spouse) he was released from custody in 2019, during the first Trump term.

Here’s how Abrego Garcia himself described things.

Plaintiff Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia (“Mr. Abrego Garcia”) won an order from an immigration judge (“IJ”) prohibiting his removal to El Salvador, after he established it was more likely than not that he would be persecuted in that country on account of a statutorily protected ground. The government could have chosen to appeal that order, but did not. The government could have chosen to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia to any other country on earth, but did not. The government could later have filed a motion to reopen proceedings against Mr. Abrego Garcia and seek to set aside the order of protection, but did not. Instead, the government put Mr. Abrego Garcia on a plane to El Salvador, seemingly without any pretense of a legal basis whatsoever. Once in El Salvador, that country’s government immediately placed Mr. Abrego Garcia into a torture center—one that the U.S. government is reportedly paying the government of El Salvador to operate. This grotesque display of power without law is abhorrent to our entire system of justice, and must not be allowed to stand.

The government, however, says the onus was on Abrego Garcia and his spouse to challenge his detention with a habeas petition, but they cannot here because he is no longer in US custody.

Because Plaintiffs seek Abrego Garcia’s release from allegedly unlawful detention on the grounds that it was effected illegally, they make a core habeas claim, and they must therefore bring it exclusively in habeas.

But there is no jurisdiction in habeas. Plaintiffs admit—as they must—that the United States does not have custody over Abrego Garcia. They acknowledge that there may be “difficult questions of redressability” in this case, reflecting their recognition that Defendants do not have “the power to produce” Abrego Garcia from CECOT in El Salvador.

This adopts an argument DOJ made in the main El Salvador deportation case before the DC Circuit, one Justin Walker took as credible.

But it exposes the legal gimmick Trump is creating. He’s trying to deport people before they avail themselves of what Trump claims is their recourse, habeas, but once they’ve been deported, they can no longer avail themselves of a habeas petition because they’re no longer in US custody.

The government also argues that they’re helpless to convince Nayib Bukele to send Abrego Garcia back.

Despite their allegations of continued payment for Abrego Garcia’s detention, Plaintiffs do not argue that the United States can exercise its will over a foreign sovereign. The most they ask for is a court order that the United States entreat—or even cajole—a close ally in its fight against transnational cartels.

[snip]

There is no showing that any payment made to El Salvador is yet to occur; no showing that El Salvador is likely to release CECOT detainees but for any such payment; no showing that El Salvador is even inclined to consider a request to release a detainee at the United States’ request.

This case is particularly interesting given questions raised weeks ago about Bukele’s own ties to MS-13.

Some say Bukele is trying to hide his government’s own involvement with the gangs.

More than two dozen high-ranking Salvadoran gang leaders have been charged with terrorism and other crimes in a Justice Department investigation that has lasted years. Several of them are jailed in the United States. One of the indictments details how senior members of Bukele’s government held secret negotiations with gang leaders after his 2019 election. The gang members wanted financial benefits, control of territory and better jail conditions, the court documents say. In exchange, they agreed to tamp down homicides in public areas and to pressure neighborhoods under their control to support Bukele’s party in midterm elections, according to the 2022 indictment.

Bukele’s government went so far as to free a top MS-13 leader, Elmer Canales Rivera, or “Crook,” from a Salvadoran prison, according to the documents — even though the U.S. government had asked for his extradition. (He was later captured in Mexico and sent to the U.S.)

Last weekend, the Trump administration sent back one of the MS-13 leaders named in the indictments, César Humberto López Larios, alias “Greñas,” along with the 238 Venezuelans and nearly two dozen other Salvadorans allegedly tied to gangs.

Some Salvadoran analysts believe Bukele wants the gang leaders back so they won’t testify about his government’s involvement with them — and potentially put him in legal trouble.

“If these returns [of Salvadoran gang members] continue, it takes away the possibility that the U.S. judicial system will open a case against Bukele for negotiations and agreements with terrorist groups,” said Juan Martínez d’Aubuisson, an anthropologist who has studied the gangs.

That is, it so happens that Abrego Garcia got “accidentally” sent back to El Salvador based on a ruling that he might have ties to MS-13, even though a judge found he demonstrated a real fear of Barrio 18, the kind of complexities of organized crime that implicates Bukele himself.

Abrego Garcia wasn’t on the manifest, but then he was.

And note, above, Cerna’s inexplicable invocation of the Alien Enemies Act — the legal basis, he notes, for the deportation of those on the other two planes sent to El Salvador that day, but not, purportedly, the one Abrego Garcia was sent on. He was sent on a plane full of people with final removal orders, allegedly. So why raise the AEA, which is not at issue in this case?

That kind of seeming non sequitur is often a tell, that the current story — the story about the third plane — is not what we’re being told.

Abrego Garcia’s case is more complex than some are making out.

But his story needs to be put in context with all the other stories of that day.

Thus far, we know that Kristi Noem demonstrated the incompetence of her DHS in a number of ways on March 15.

She sent women on flights even though Bukele would only accept men.

She sent a Nicaraguan even though Bukele refused to accept other Central Americans.

She sent a slew of men, including a gay makeup artist and a professional soccer player, based primarily on their tattoos. (ACLU liberated one of the checklists showing the centrality of tattoos to determinations of Tren de Aragua membership.)

And she sent Abrego Garcia to El Salvador in defiance of a ruling that she couldn’t do that.

Everything we’ve learned about the flights on March 15 show how utterly incompetent Kristi Noem’s DHS is.

DOJ is trying to hide Noem’s incompetence via a range of legal ploys. Or, in the case of Abrego Garcia, they’re just disclaiming any responsibility to reverse her failures.

But as we discuss the Trump’s Administration’s assault on due process, it bears notice that they’re trying to eliminate due process even as Noem proves, over and over, that she’s utterly incompetent to do even what she claims she’s trying to do competently.

Update: Corrected gang that extorted Abrego Garcia’s family.

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73 replies
  1. Rugger_9 says:

    It will be intersting to see what happens when these folks are turfed out. Will there be a truth commission (i.e. South Africa) or trials? That also would assume they stay in office beyond the dates they were useful. In Noem’s case a string of court losses will do it, because of the bad publicity. FWIW, her photo op stunt in El Salvador also violated the Geneva Conventions for the treatment of prisoners. There is no wisdom in any of them, nor any concept of a long game.

    Why would this done be a meteoric attack, to flame out once the cases pile up? The fact that Convict-1 / Krasnov doesn’t seem to be the least concerned about p;rotecting his voters from harm tells me that this is an attempt to get all the bad stuff in as a fait accompli and I would suspect C-1 / K will be moved out once the opportunity for rapid gains is over. While Vance is in the MAGA doghouse (more or less) he is still Veep and a lot smarter than Convict-1 / Krasnov and therefore more dangerous to America.

    Reply
    • Sandor Raven says:

      “There is no wisdom in any of them, nor any concept of a long game”. But she is a problem-solver, a leader — if only we put aside the fact that this may amount to the careless cruelty of innocents.

      ‘Noem shot and killed [the family’s dog] Cricket on some undisclosed date years ago for being bad at pheasant hunting and good at chicken hunting. The moral, Noem wrote, is that leaders deal with problems immediately. That makes her a “doer,” she claimed, not an “avoider.”’

      Noem’s dog killing was bad, but to really understand her, consider the goat
      South Dakota Searchlight
      Seth Tupper
      May 2, 2024

      Reply
    • CaptainCondorcet says:

      Besides flooding the zone with shit, the “meteoric attack” serves another use. Whatever court decisions result, many of them will be heard by SCOTUS. Starting early means Trump will have ample time to use their eventual unified decisions to push through the rest of his agenda, even beyond possible loss of Congress in 2026 in some cases. And if we want to get REALLY conspiratorial, nothing prevents Trump himself from pushing for expansion of SCOTUS before that happens.

      Reply
  2. Amateur Lawyer At Work says:

    What strikes me is “list of alternate” candidates for deportation. This was a stunt designed to test the courts and get SCOTUS to bless a maximal deportation strategy using the Alien Enemies Act and without due process. They wanted enough bodies for, “X% of them were clearly gang members [based on our unchallenged assumptions]. What percentage is acceptable to five Justices?”
    I also want to know WHY the courts HERE are helpless to compel foreign policy when the Fifth Circuit ruled in Texas v. Biden that a single district court judge could require the President to undertake court-ordered negotiations with Mexico over foreign policy concerning immigrations (I know it was overturned by SCOTUS on different grounds, but still, the Fifth Circuit laid down its marker).

    Reply
    • chicago_bunny says:

      To address this point: “I also want to know WHY the courts HERE are helpless to compel foreign policy when the Fifth Circuit ruled in Texas v. Biden that a single district court judge could require the President to undertake court-ordered negotiations with Mexico over foreign policy concerning immigrations (I know it was overturned by SCOTUS on different grounds, but still, the Fifth Circuit laid down its marker).”

      The issue isn’t the foreign policy questions. It’s whether the court has jurisdiction over the person/entity it purports to compel to act. In the example you provided, the court could at least make the argument that it had jurisdiction over the president to compel him to act (here, to negotiate).

      And that’s really how the law should be enforced here too. The court does not have jurisdiction to order El Salvador to return anyone to the US. However, it does have jurisdiction over the Trump officials who are the reason why those people are no longer in the US. And the US court can compel increasingly strong sanctions against those officials if they refuse or fail to have those people returned to our country.

      Reply
      • xyxyxyxy says:

        I don’t think any of those people will ever set foot outside that prison, no matter who wants their release.
        If the US jilts on payments for their jailing, the prisoners will probably be executed to make room for more prisoners from who knows where.

        Reply
  3. Corey Leander says:

    I think it’s important to note that the October 2019 ruling from David Jones discusses Abrego-Garcia and the Barrio 18 gang, not MS-13. The ruling states that Abrego-Garcia feared being forced into the Barrio 18 gang, so his mother sent him to the US.

    Reply
  4. biff murphy says:

    “the absolute incompetence of DHS under Kristi Noem”

    I really don’t think it’s incompetence.
    I don’t think they care.
    Miller is running this shit show, and they’ll pardon anyone they think needs it.
    The cruelty is the message they send.
    They have their orders.
    Consequences be damned.
    Shameful bunch in this administration.

    Reply
    • Frank Probst says:

      ^^^This. They’re not trying to deport people legally. They’re trying to scare the shit out of people until something sticks. If they wanted competent lawyering, they would’ve kept some of the competent lawyers that they had.

      What they’re doing here is similar to the “Muslim ban” during Trump’s first term. It took three tries for SCOTUS to finally say that it technically wasn’t a Muslim ban, even if that’s what they were still calling it.

      This is trial-and-error lawyering. And they don’t care about losing, because they can just retcon the whole thing, try again, and get away with it. Noem’s team is still getting paid, even when they lose in court. They go home and the end of the day knowing that they did what they were there to do.

      Reply
    • Ginevra diBenci says:

      Trump made nothing more obvious in his cabinet picks than the fact that his apex criterion (unthreatening, sometimes farcical mediocrity) would translate into abject incompetence with his approval.

      Implementing disaster on such a scale does require some rudimentary skill. Susie Wiles keeps the trains running off the rails, while Stephen Miller remains conductor uber alles. But the rest? Trump chose a particular kind of mirror-self with each. None can ever challenge his primacy because, well…mediocrity, but in each he must recognize a sociopathic lack of empathy very similar to his own.

      You’re right. They just don’t care. They’re in it for themselves.

      Reply
  5. harpie says:

    2019 TRUMP is president

    2/3/19 BUKELE wins presidential election

    WaPo: One of the indictments details how senior members of Bukele’s government held secret negotiations with gang leaders after his 2019 election.

    4/29/19 Bond Hearing for Abrego Garcia

    Marcy: an immigration judge took the hearsay word of an informant sufficiently seriously to detain Abrego Garcia based on a claim that he had ties to MS-13

    6/1/19 BUKELE inauguration
    10/10/19 ORDER prohibiting [Abrego Garcia’s] deportation to El Salvador based on real fears of persecution, including gang targeting.

    Reply
    • Rayne says:

      Thinking of that Proud Boy (or was it an Oathkeeper) who was messing with undocumented persons in order to foment the illusion of a border crisis. Wonder if there was something more organized in tandem with El Salvador’s leadership change.

      Reply
    • harpie says:

      [Addition to TL]

      12/19/19 Decision of Board of Immigration Appeals

      [pdf2/2] We adopt and affirm the Immigration Judge’s danger ruling (IJ at 2-3). See Matter of Burbano, 20 I&N Dec, 872, 874 (BIA 1994). Notwithstanding the respondent’s challenges to the reliability of the GFIS, the Immigration Judge appropriately considered allegations of gang affiliation against the respondent in determining that he has not demonstrated that he is not a danger to property or persons. […]

      Reply
  6. Snowdog of the North says:

    Kristi Noem was just as incompetent and lawless as governor of South Dakota. Using the state airplane for personal trips and out-of-state partisan junkets, nepotism driven improper influencing of a state licensing board, ginning up and having the state pay for a legal battle to override a constitutional amendment passed by the people, building a hideous fence around the governor’s mansion to protect her from her constituents using private money when the public board said no, etc. etc.

    Her only qualification for anything is that she knows what and whose bodily orifice to kiss. And that is apparently enough to demonstrate success in this administration.

    Reply
  7. Hcgorman says:

    The Miami Herald is reporting that they are using a point system to pick their victims. I will pull the actual document when I get to the office (it was filed in an ACLU lawsuit). It is as stupid as you can imagine and you don’t need many points to get sent out.

    Reply
  8. Canine Whisperer says:

    Venezuela is a signatory to the Rome Statute and as such the International Criminal Court can investigate and possibly prosecute the following, per their webpage listed below, of offenses against their citizenry upon formal complaint-Putin and Netanyahu both have outstanding arrest warrants from the ICC.
    “The 15 forms of crimes against humanity listed in the Rome Statute include offences such as murder, rape, imprisonment, enforced disappearances, enslavement – particularly of women and children, sexual slavery, torture, apartheid and deportation.”

    Reply
  9. harpie says:

    Look at this paragraph from the 4/29/19 Bond Memorandum:
    [I’ve separated the thoughts and added emphasis]

    [pdf2/3] […] After considering the information provided by both parties, the Court concluded that no bond was appropriate in this matter. The Court first reasoned that the Respondent failed to meet his burden of demonstrating that his release from custody would not pose a danger to others, as the evidence shows that he is a verified member of MS-13. Matter of Siniauskas, 27 l&N Dec. at 210; Matter of Adeniji, 22 l&N Dec. at 1111-13; 8 C.F.R. § 1003.19(h)(3).

    The BIA has held that, absent any indication that the information therein is incorrect or was the result of coercion or duress, Form 1-213 is “inherently trustworthy and admissible.” Matter of Barcenas, 19 l&N Dec. 609,611 (BIA 1988).

    The Respondent contends that the Form 1-213 in his case erroneously states that he was detained in connection to a murder investigation. He also claims that the 1-213 is internally contradicts itself as to whether the Respondent fears returning to El Salvador.

    The reason for the Respondent’s arrest given on his Form 1-213 does appear at odds with the Gang Field Interview Sheet, which states that the Respondent was approached because he and others were loitering outside of a Home Depot.

    Regardless, the determination that the Respondent is a gang member appears to be trustworthy and is supported by other evidence in the record, namely, information contained in the Gang Field Interview Sheet.

    Although the Court is reluctant to give evidentiary weight to the Respondent’s clothing as an indication of gang affiliation, the fact that a “past, proven, and reliable source of information” verified the Respondent’s gang membership, rank, and gang name is sufficient to support that the Respondent is a gang member, and the Respondent has failed to present evidence to rebut that assertion. […]

    Reply
    • Sheryl_Robins says:

      This thing about, oh, so sorry we made a mistake. Oh well, nothing we can do now that they’re not in our custody…. I guess they can’t admit making a mistake (they never make mistakes). I wonder if since the US Government won’t ask for them back if someone else could ask. Like ACLU or ask Bad Bunny or Jennifer Lopez to ask. I’d like to get as many out as possible. Thinking of someone Bukele might listen to.

      Reply
      • bloopie2 says:

        I read recently that the DOJ is pushing hard on Rule 65 bond requirements whenever an aggrieved plaintiff asks for a TRO or an injunction against government actions. For example, if a court allows $50 million in funding to proceed, the plaintiff is asked to put up a bond in that amount in case the ruling gets reversed, so the government can recover the ill spent money.

        I wonder (as you do) if there is any kind of reciprocal action that can be taken. That is, if a deportation turns out to be both wrong and harmful, is there any recourse?

        Reply
    • harpie says:

      It looks like that is the section the Board of Immigration Appeals
      “adopt and affirm” on 12/19/19 [link in the post]:

      [pdf2/2] We adopt and affirm the Immigration Judge’s danger ruling (IJ at 2-3). See Matter of Burbano, 20 I&N Dec, 872, 874 (BIA 1994). Notwithstanding the respondent’s challenges to the reliability of the GFIS, the Immigration Judge appropriately considered allegations of gang affiliation against the respondent in determining that he has not demonstrated that he is not a danger to property or persons. […]

      Reply
    • Ginevra diBenci says:

      “…Respondent has failed to produce evidence to rebut that assertion.”

      They are demanding that Abrego-Garcia prove a negative. What evidence would *I* summon to demonstrate that I’m not a member of MS13, Tren de Agua, or whichever gang du jour Trump decides is “invading” his lily-white America? I can’t think of a shred. And I have tattoos. Should all of us start counting up our own “points”?

      That IS what they want: for all of us to start wondering how many points we’ve racked up. That’s the authoritarian model. It runs on an ulcerous form of small-bore terrorism, the kind that grinds you down day by day until you comply out of exhaustion as much as fear.

      Reply
  10. bgThenNow says:

    47 has little interest in the actual job. He is in it primarily for retribution and the power and $$ he imagines is All His. The regime is being run by SM. They have him sign documents and give him sets of lines as though it is a TV show. Despite his dementia, he can still perform.

    We can only hope the voters will have some retribution today.

    Reply
  11. originalK says:

    The 2019 case is part of the same pattern of pretense from officials like Miller & Homan. A suggestion of “gang affiliation” is one of the stricter areas in immigration law, a slam-dunk, get out of incompetence free card. Additionally, traffic violations that one is not able to comply with are perfect examples of laws that bind those they do not protect.

    So any tattoo (on the targeted class of person) morphs into a gang tattoo. A group of day laborers waiting to.pick up a job get elevated to a criminal syndicate.

    Under law, his marriage to a U.S. citizen spouse, even in everyday circumstances, is not the remedy people think it iis (children even less) and can’t overcome the gang allegations.

    He was already targeted & boxed in in 2019, and then targeted again in 2025.

    Reply
    • bloopie2 says:

      Our beloved Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, thinks that causing a ruckus is grounds for deportation (or, perhaps , for “disappearing” someone ?). “If you come into the U.S. as a visitor and create a ruckus for us… We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country”. Even for student visa holders. (This, according to Salon, without citation).

      Are you getting used to the new order of things yet?

      Reply
      • originalK says:

        I’m saying it isn’t 100% a new order. It’s an escalation of the types of abuses they already engage in and propaganda they have spread for decades while doing nothing in their power (updating laws) to solve perceived problems.

        Reply
  12. wetzel-rhymes-with says:

    Jeff Sharlet and his wife, Julia Rabig wrote an interesting essay on the infamous visuals last week of Secretary of Homeland Security standing in front of a group of imprisoned men in El Salvador. Their essay is very good at showing how the visuals are intended as a complicated propaganda involving gender issues and biological essentialism.

    In Amusing Ourselves To Death, during the Reagan era, Neil Postman wrote about the transformation of politics into a kind of pornographic infotainment. Now we are no longer just amusing ourselves to death, both others to death for our amusement, but this is different. I would go further than Sharlet and Rabig. The caged Venezuelans are on their steel bunks behind Kristi Noem. She is standing before the cage with her Mar a Lago face, the Brazzers lips, but it is not really a pornographic exhibition, but carnographic, I believe. I think there needs to be a different work, the exhibition of atrocity for infotainment and to terrorize. Without habeas corpus and the production of the truth about these men, the world is a crime, and so Noem makes the argument of de Sade’s 100 Days of Sodom which brings eros to argue that since the world is a crime, anything was permitted.

    Reply
    • LaMissy! says:

      I read those are NOT the Venezuelans we renditioned to El Salvador. They are the Salvadorans Bukele imprisoned, who are more scary looking than the men shipped like dangerous cargo from the US.

      Reply
  13. Ginevra diBenci says:

    “12. …Generally, individuals were not placed on the manifest until they were cleared for removal.

    “13. ICE was aware of this grant of withholding of removal at the time AbregoGarcia’s removal from the United States. Reference was made to this status on internal forms.

    “14. Abrego-Garcia…was an alternate…assigned to the flight. The manifest did not indicate that Abrego-Garcia should not be removed.

    15. Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador. This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13. [bold]”
    _________________________________________________________________

    Fascists torture language, for which they have no respect, to achieve their goals. They expect an audience primed to accept their disinformation as fact to accept all assertions as truthful. The more they succeed, the lazier they get and the more the language they exploit betrays the shoddiness of their foundations.

    Here, a panoply of passive constructions (were not placed, were cleared, reference was made, was removed) conceal the agency behind questionable actions; hiding who did things makes it harder to hold them accountable. Declarative statements shift agency to non-humans: “ICE was aware” (as if ICE, an agency, had “awareness”); “…The manifest did not indicate that A-G should not be removed” (as if the manifest, either paper or a computer file but certainly not a human, should be held accountable for the lapse).

    The latter sentence, with its glaringly unrevised double negative, almost made me laugh. But I swallowed that laughter as I meditated on the word “removed.” In this context, its soft sound makes the irony of the euphemism poisonous. Because, here, “removed” means your life here is over. And in this particular case, it seems, it might as well mean your life is over.

    #15 Reads like AI-generated CYA boilerplate. “Through administrative error…an oversight…carried out in good faith…” These phrases somewhat contradict each other, but their vagueness undermines any legal recourse based on that. I remain troubled by the closing salvo, “based on the existence of a final order of removal” AND Eureka! Let’s throw the gang thing at him again! So now wait…there was no order of removal (Sorry, our bad, frowny-face emoji) but now maybe it “exists”?

    This may be the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, but when you hold all the weapons and fire in all directions without stopping, you net the same effect.

    Reply
    • harpie says:

      Thanks for these reflections on the language, Ginevra.
      Though depressing, it’s very helpful.

      I feel like yelling Habeas Final Order of Removal!

      Reply
    • harpie says:

      Some more language:
      1] https://bsky.app/profile/mehdirhasan.bsky.social/post/3llq74hzv2k2l
      April 1, 2025 at 2:01 AM Tweet by VANCE to Jon Favreau:

      JD Vance @JDVance
      My comment is that according to the court document you apparently didn’t read he was a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here.

      My further comment is that it’s gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize.

      2] https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llrbyrmzlz22
      April 1, 2025 at 12:25 PM Karoline LEAVITT

      12:19 PM [0:025] LEAVITT: Well, first of all, the error that you are referring to was a clerical error, it was an administrative error. The administration maintains the position that this individual who was deported to El Salvador and will not be returning to our country was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang. That is fact number one. Fact number two, we also have credible intelligence proving that this individual was involved in human trafficking. And fact number three, this individual was a member, actually a leader of the brutal MS-13 gang which this president has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

      Reply
      • P-villain says:

        Funny – I think it’s gross that a Yale-educated lawyer cares not at all for the rule of law.

        And that’s the first time I’ve said something was “gross” since I was a teenager, a developmental stage that appears to be terminal for Junior Division.

        Reply
    • harpie says:

      3] https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llrcdu6npj2
      April 1, 2025 at 12:32 PM LEAVITT:

      12:27 PM Q: A few questions about this deportation case. First, I wanted to clarify something that you said to Jeff a few minutes ago. You said you’d seen evidence that this man was a convicted gang member. In what court was he convicted and for what?

      [0:15] LEAVITT: The, this individual was an MS-13 ring leader. This individual was also engaged in human trafficking. And I’m glad you brought up this point again, because I would like to point out that [raising voice] if you just saw the headline from the insane failing Atlantic Magazine this morning, you would think this individual was father of the year living in Maryland living a peaceful life, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. They didn’t even mention, in the title of that article or even in the first paragraph that this individual is an [raising voice, pointing finger] illegal criminal who broke our nation’s immigration laws. He is a leader in the brutal MS-13 gang and he is involved in human trafficking. And now MS-13 is a designated foreign terrorist organization. Foreign terrorists have no legal protections in the United States of America.

      Reply
      • P J Evans says:

        Undocumented immigration is a civil violation, not a criminal violation. Which ICE will never admit while The Felon Guy and S Miller are making the decisions about who can stay.

        Reply
      • Memory hole says:

        So according to Ms. Leavitt, in the space of a couple answers, Mr. Garcia moved up from a gang member, to a leader, to a ring leader. No wonder why they took action.

        Reply
    • harpie says:

      4/4] https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llrcfutfzp2r
      April 1, 2025 at 12:33 PM LEAVITT:

      12:28 PM Q: But a judge ordered that he should remain in this country. So, are you saying that it is OK to ignore a judge’s ruling if you don’t like it?

      [0:08] LEAVITT: Ah, who does that judge work for?
      [Q: He’s an immigration judge]
      It was an immigration judge who works for the Department of Justice at the direction of the Attorney General of the United States, whose name is Pam Bondi, who has committed to irradicating MS-13 from our nation’s interior.

      [0:22] And let me tell you why we have made this commitment. MS-13, [raising voice] may I remind each and every one of you, is a brutal and vicious gang. They raped and strangled […]

      Reply
    • P J Evans says:

      And “purported membership” – purported by ICE. Which assumes that they can tell a gang tat from any other kind (they can’t) and that their conclusions are correct (they aren’t).

      Reply
  14. Konny_2022 says:

    Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, according to The Atlantic, put what’s happened in a nutshell:

    “They claim that the court is powerless to order any relief,” Sandoval-Moshenberg told me. “If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless—all of them—because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”

    For Leavitt it’s “the insane failing Atlantic Magazine” acccording to the quote in harpie’s comment above (April 1, 2025 at 5:37 pm). I don’t dare to include the direct link to the Atlantic (I seem to get into moderation always when including a link, however trustworthy it seems). But the article may be easily found with a search for the heading “An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran Prison.”

    Reply
  15. e.a. foster says:

    Where did El Salvador get the money to build that prison? Who actually built it, as in who did the actual work. Sending people to countries which are not their own and paying the foreign country doesn’t make much financial sense unless you’re doing it as a round about to pay off other countries’ controllers.
    Reported actions by Noem are a tad unhinged. How she was chosen for the position is beyond me. On the other hand Trump “hired” Musk also. In other countries these people would not even be considered for rat elimination or picking up garbage in parks.
    Same with Heggie and some of those on the “call”. These people are not only inept at their jobs, they nasty pieces of business and they like attention. Its why they were most likely selected by Trump. Trump chose the biggest idiots he could find for these positions. People like that usually don’t care about what they are doing, as long as they get their picture in the paper and some one tells them they’re great.
    The people who were sent to El Salvador were chosen so people would be outraged. They just needed “extras” for Noem’s photo shoot. She looks about as tacky as MTG.
    I’m waiting to see when they arrest an American citizen and send them to their concentration camp in El Salvador. Wonder if any one will notice or care or just too busy covering their own asses to avoid being arrested.

    Reply
      • Palli Davis Holubar says:

        “People who look good on tv”… to trump. trump actually thinks he is handsome! Knowing her retro pre-civil rights politics it is odd Noem choose to reject her natural white bread “girl next door” look in favor of reconstructed characteristics that blur stereotypical characteristics that represent the exact opposite of her inbred bigotry.

        Reply
  16. starling says:

    Two questions for those who know more about this. Months or years from now, we’ll find out who ordered this and who gave the go-ahead for those flights after the courts said no. Does anyone really believe that Heimwehr Barbie is the one calling the shots here?

    Second, why are they making this argument that the *administration* cannot compel El Salvador to return Mr. Abrego Garcia? It would be an easy argument, and sufficient, to say that the courts cannot even consider compelling the executive to return Mr. Abrego Garcia, because he has no standing to ask for this relief. President Trump has gone to the mat for the right to stiff contractors and to extort universities and law firms, so obviously he is not above using leverage to get what he wants. Why do they feel the need to establish as a matter of fact that the administration cannot compel the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia?

    Reply
  17. I Never Lie and am Always Right says:

    I’m not quite sure that what I’m contemplating is a legally appropriate remedy, but it would be interesting if the judge ordered one K Noem imprisoned until Garcia is back on US soil.

    Reply
  18. harpie says:

    From ProPublica:

    Inside ICE Air: Flight Attendants on Deportation Planes Say Disaster Is “Only a Matter of Time” https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-ice-air-deportation-flights McKenzie Funk April 1, 2025, 6 a.m. EDT

    The flight attendant, a young woman who went by the nickname Lala, said she grabbed the plane’s emergency oxygen bottle and rushed past rows of migrants chained at the wrists and ankles to reach the girl and her parents.

    By then, Lala was accustomed to the hard realities of working charter flights for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She’d learned to obey instructions not to look the passengers in the eyes, not to greet them or ask about their well-being. But until the girl collapsed, Lala had managed to escape an emergency. […]

    Reply
  19. Savage Librarian says:

    About prisons…

    “Pam Bondi’s Extensive Lobbying For Wealt… “ – United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 1/15/25

    “Lobbying on behalf of private prisons:
    Bondi lobbied for The GEO Group, a private prison company that has faced criticism for safety violations, providing inadequate health care, and poor management practices. These actions have negatively impacted the welfare and rights of incarcerated individuals and immigration detainees, and The GEO Group stands to earn hundreds of millions of dollars during the Trump Administration, as ICE is its largest source of revenue.”

    https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/dem/releases/pam-bondis-extensive-lobbying-for-wealthy-special-interests-and-foreign-government-poses-serious-conflict-of-interest

    Reply
  20. harpie says:

    ew: She sent women on flights even though Bukele would only accept men.

    That is linked to Marcy’s 3/25 post:
    Kristi Noem Invokes State Secrets to Cover-Up Her Inability to ID Women as Women
    One of those women is SZFR,

    who, like other women on one of the planes, had not yet been formally deported and so by definition should only have been on one of the planes alleged to carry TdA members — described guards on the plane acknowledging that they knew an order prohibited the departure of the plane. She also described that guards were trying to force the male detainees on the plane to sign forms admitting they were TdA members.

    [quoting from the testimony:]

    […] 11. Within a couple of minutes of take off I heard two US government officials talking and they said “there is an order saying we can’t take off but we already have.” […]

    Reply
    • harpie says:

      That testimony is recounted in the NEW article:

      ‘We were lied to:’ Two women the Trump administration tried to send to El Salvador prison speak out The women’s accounts raise questions about the thoroughness of the administration’s vetting of migrants it has sent to the notorious prison. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/two-women-trump-admin-tried-send-el-salvador-prison-speak-rcna198958 April 2, 2025, 5:00 AM EDT [emphasis added]

      […] Finally, [after two tries] on the [March] 15th, they were taken to the airport.

      There was more confusion at the airport. Eighteen women were taken there, and eight of them were loaded onto a plane, according to Moyetones and Rodriguez, but then a group of men was loaded on after them, leaving 10 women behind on a bus. A woman sharing a cell at the Texas detention center with Rodriguez and Moyetones, who gave her name only as Karla, said she was one of those 10 women.

      According to Karla, the women on the bus were “desperate” to find out why they had not boarded a plane.

      “An immigration official got on and she told us, ‘You want to go back to your country, right?’ And we said, ‘Yes, obviously!’” she recalled. The official then said, “Well then, you should thank God that you’re not going on that plane, because that plane is not going to Venezuela,” she told NBC News. […]

      Reply
    • harpie says:

      This is the best timeline for the flights I’ve found so far
      [I can’t remember who… Marcy?… first linked to it]:

      Timeline of What Appears to be Defiance of a Judicial Order: Applying the Alien Enemies Act to Venezuelans Sent to El Salvador’s Prisons Without Due Process https://adamisacson.com/timeline-of-what-appears-to-be-defiance-of-a-judicial-order-applying-the-alien-enemies-act-to-venezuelans-sent-to-el-salvadors-prisons-without-due-process/ Adam Isacson March 16, 2025
      [Right now, last edited at 1:30PM Eastern on Tuesday, March 18.]

      Reply

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